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Homemade Cereal

OK, I rarely feed my kids cold cereal. If I do, I buy organic (and we all know how expensive that is… especially for a big family), so I stopped buying organic and started thinking, I will just make my own. I looked at a recipe to see what I wanted to do. If you don’t know already, I don’t like following recipes. I will get a general idea and then go with my gut and what I want to do. So, I went to the store and purchased oatmeal, granola, some dried fruit, nuts, brown rice syrup and some fresh fruit. I had flax-seed on hand.

I made oatmeal like you would for hot cereal and added in all the rest of the ingredients, along with a little honey and let it cook a little longer. I then transferred it to a couple of cookie sheets that I buttered down so it wouldn’t stick. I put it onto the cookie sheets and added some of the brown rice syrup for flavor and so it would all sort of stick and had the oven set to 375 degrees and let it bake. I will say, if I was going to change anything about this, I would have put it on the cookie sheet a little thinner so I didn’t have to turn cereal over because that was a bit of a pain in the rear. Anyway, I let it bake for about 15-20 min on each side and got it out and let it cool and then I broke it up into “bite size pieces” and put it into a container and then refrigerated for the next morning.

The kids (and husband) could hardly wait to eat it. When I was baking it the kids were asking what I was cooking and they wanted it now because it smelled so good. SUCCESS! They loved it and even ate it as a dry snack later on. It lasted about 4 days and they can’t wait for me to make it again. This is something I will continue to make for them because it is healthy and tastes delicious!

I spent around $22 on ingredients (not including flax seed which I have on hand and can’t remember how much I paid for it). They (5 people) ate it for breakfast 4 days in a row and even had it as a snack 1 day. I say it was well worth it. More than the cost savings though, I was looking for a healthy alternative to the preservatives and chemicals laden in much of our food supply today (more than most people know). I want to know how to make whatever my family wants to eat, along with taking my money elsewhere if they support GMO and/or Monsanto. We are also trying to buy local and stay local. What sense does it make to purchase something that has been trucked across the country when I can keep our local economy alive and purchase locally? We aren’t fully there yet, but we are diligently trying. 🙂